Belize-registered Kilimanjaro Capital this year listed on the GXG Market.
With Forest Gate Energy, it plans to invest exclusively in so-called Future Contingent Licences promoting oil exploration in blocks-0-14 off Cabinda, in Biafra and Southern Cameroon — all non-sovereign territories with secessionist movements in varying degrees of insurrection.
Kilimanjaro, which succeeded Paris-based Banque Rothschild as the original concession holder for Biafran acreage, is organised from the offices of Washington, US law firm Brimstone & Co where partner Jonathan Levy is charged with structuring transactions.
“As with our deal with the Front for the Liberation of the State of Cabinda (FLEC), one has to look at the governments against which the groups are rebelling and see whether they have passed their sell-by date — as is the case with the current Angolan regime,” says Levy.
Levy oversees portfolio expansion under Kilimanjaro chief executive Zulfikar Rashid, a Ugandan national. The Southern Cameroons deal was signed with an unincorporated association specifying the laws of England, while the Cabinda party was recognised in Switzerland as a juridical entity.
“Put simply, the more money raised the higher the chance of any group succeeding — it’s using the resource base to raise money,” says Levy
Legal measures Kilimanjaro is backed by the self-styled President of Southern Cameroons, Ebenezer Akwanga, whose government-in-exile promises to “take legal measures to contest both the ethics and legitimacy of Addax’s presence in Bakassi” — an adjacent oil-rich territory in south-east Nigeria, which itself has a secessionist movement.
Indications are that a similar deal may also be afoot with the ethnic Tuareg proto-state of Azawad, which this month renewed its plan to split from Mali and is the latest aspirant to join the Washington-based Organisation of Emerging African States (OEAS).
With control over Timbuktu, Kidal, Gao, and Mopti, Azawad aspires to rule through a secular constitution over the Paleozoic basins of Tauodeni, Tamesna, Illumedin, Nara and much of the Ilizi.
Levy says Azawad could be the next South Sudan as the Tuareg militia are better armed and provide better security. “It just depends on what the Great Powers want and how efficient the Malian government can be,” he says.
One small Nigerian-owned, London-based explorer has little confidence in this scenario, two months back signing up Block 6 in the heart of the Taoudeni by the Algerian border.
Described by Minister of Mines & Energy Mamadou Diarra Igor as a “course correction”, the decision by Raven Resources with partner Corvus Resources to table $50 million worth of initial exploration expenditure over seven years is surely designed to shore up faith in the status quo.
So Kilimanjaro’s zeal may be dismissed as opportunist — Akwanga also serves as OEAS secretary general — and not one of these territories can yet practically be described as self-governing.
But sympathisers argue that, in future, any social licence to explore Africa’s untapped frontiers can be issued only by the indigenous authorities, not the decaying entities upon whom right to rule was entrusted by the departing colonial powers.
Taking acreage positions with non-sovereign entities in deals dependent on recognition is not new.
Western minnows A raft of western minnows have done exactly this in Western Sahara, Somaliland and Puntland, although most of the latter are discredited as international conventions steer business towards recognition of the original Somali state.
Nevertheless, these small companies will retain their bargaining chips when the dust settles, as will New York-based Jarch Capital when the fledgling South Sudan government decides whether to stick with awards issued to the majors by the pre-independence Islamist regime in Khartoum or wipe the slate clean and honour deals done with rebel militia leaders in the last days of the bush war.